There are plenty of things that might upset Johnny “The Basin Street Butcher” Martorano. Perhaps having murdered 20 people in the course of his career as a mob hitman doesn’t sit so well decades later. Well, no, this is not it, Martorano recently recounted his murders as part of Whitey Bulger’s trial with a perfectly flat affect, much to the displeasure of his victims’ families. It seems guilt doesn’t keep him up at night.

Then maybe it’s the 12 years he spent in prison after confessing his crimes to the FBI? Not likely, given Martorano now lives in a nice country club neighborhood, after serving barely half a year for each murder. He literally got away with murder(s).

What about revealing himself to his unsuspecting neighbors by testifying in the sensational trial? Doing so could arguably disrupt the life he’s built for himself since his release from prison. According to the man himself, that’s not at the root of his self-professed suffering.

So what wounded this evidently hard-hearted man? A betrayal of friendship and trust! During the trial, Martorano said of Bulger and fellow gangster, Stephen Flemmi (in perhaps the only instance the expression has been used in earnest) “They were my partners in crime, they were my best friends, they were my children’s godfathers.” Of all the things that could cause The Basin Street Butcher pain, it was the snitching of his fellow murderers.

This is the kind of “irrational ethics” I’ve found through many interviews with convicted criminals. Usually the crimes for which they’re incarcerated aren’t the cause of their moral outrage, it’s that someone from their inside group inviolated a moral rule that was part of their moral code, in this case, cooperating with the “enemy.” This is the power of social norms in its most extreme form. Even though the usual societal rules are disregarded, another sort of code emerges and becomes the basis for judging one’s actions. So it’s “okay” to kill a person outside your in-group for stealing or talking to the cops, but it’s crossing the ultimate line to do so within the group. All that said, you really have to wonder what their get-togethers were like.

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Dan Ariely, I think you are a sociologist at heart. Theories of deviance wrestle with exactly this sort of irrational behavior. Murder, embezzlement, eating disorders, steroid use, the list goes on – when is it okay to break broadly accepted moral codes and when is it not? Subjective justifications help these people live with themselves.

More to the point, in what way is it different than a soldier who “murders” the enemy? (If we can get away from using loaded words like “murder” and try to create some technical terms (“terminate another human being’s life”) then we can group together a very large number of things that most people consider distinct (“first degree murder,” “criminal negligence causing death,” “self defense,” “judicial execution,” etc.). What is the value in this? A lot: we get to see that in all cases we are terminating the life of another human being. The friends and relatives of that other human will not blindly see our side of the story or our rationalization. And perhaps if we had more empathy (per McNamara’s rules from the Fog of War), we would spend less time and intellectual effort justifying our killings while complaining about the other side’s killings, and more time trying to reduce the amount of killing. But that would be rational.

In-group ethics is not really uncommon. You see it in religion, even in politics. It may well be ‘irrational’ to some degree – but it can also be seen as the most rational thing to do. What is rational, is protecting the group you are in – you have a stake in your family – it is more rational to spend time/money/effort in supporting your family – it would be irrational to let your own family starve while supporting someone elses’. Same for the hitman – its rational to protect his ‘in-group’ – and irrational for them to break the code.

Not trying to justify what he did – but trying to get at what exactly you’re claiming, here.

Maybe this is the seed for another book. I discovered you about a month ago in some internet search. I read The Upside of Irrationality in 3 days, The Honest Truth About Dishonesty in 3 days and I am currently reading Predictably Irrational. Point being, I hope you’re writing something. For the last 20 years, I’ve been interested in why people murder with no seeming moral conscience. Hit Men/Women is just one aspect of this. I know you have probably seen The Iceman Interviews–chilling. Also Carl Panzram: The Story of Hate and Vengeance Documentary is also fascinating.

Not only is group solidarity rational, but it is entirely irrational to break with your group. Don’t believe me? Just ask Bradley/Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden what it’s like to break with your own group.

Yes, this makes sense to me. We see this behavior across the spectrum, not just with criminals, but in high schools and the workplace. It begs the question of ethics in general. I’m stealing from a book I just read, Crucial Accountability, but the authors there say we do things 1 for personal reasons 2. based on what our group might think and 3 the structure we happen to be in. So breaking from a group, whether it’s breaking out of your current career, aiming out of your social bracket, or escaping a cult is a “sin.” (Didn’t Freud talk about this?) It’s sad to see this truism played out to the extreme in the case Dan puts to us here, but statistically it makes sense that we’d have a few deviants interpreting the moral code this way, no?

I notice, and find intriguing, this kind of behaviour in sport. Cycling is perhaps the most popular example. Cyclists have no morality concerning the rules governing their sport. They will lie and cheat and do anything to get an advantage over their competitors (even as far as Lance Armstrong reporting his competitors to anti doping authorities, see Tyler Hamilton’s book). And yet they strictly abide by a moral code that they requires them to not take advantage of someone’s mechanical failure or bathroom break.

Ha, ha, well said. Very nice analogy. Old “one-ball” — now I have to question his whole fight with “cancer” as possibly being self-induced — Armstrong is still going to live strong thanks to all his investments and residuals. But I doubt he’ll be getting the great dates he used to. I could be wrong.

There is an interesting corollary in a recent NYT article by By WINNIE HU and J. DAVID GOODMAN about street violence by “crews”. I learned on following the massacres in Rawanda and Burundi that demonizing another group (they called them “cockroaches”) strongly enhances solidarity to one’s own group. Group identity is second only to self identity in its influence on perception and behaviour.

On the contrary! Few animals are murderers (chimpanzees sometimes murder other chimpanzees). Homo sapiens has the dubious distinction of being the murderous ape. We kill our own kind–as well as other living creatures, which we kill not only for food but also for sport. If that isn’t murder than I don’t know what is.

@the people above, saying that this isn’t any different than the military killing ‘the enemy’ and other in-group stuff.

I think what’s different about it is that we already know that a large number of soldiers are affected by the things they’ve seen/done during wars. PTSD was discovered exactly due to observations done on soldiers returning from service in Vietnam and other such. And I think it might be a fair guess to say that a number of those who don’t suffer from it (or admit to suffering from it) still feel about it one way or another.

The question might be why the in-group matters so much and the out-group so little, maybe. Or whether people such as this one have no empathy, but are still able to feel betrayed themselves.

Not sure it’s about irrationality, but I think Dan is allowed to be interested in matters not obviously directly related to irrationality, too ;)

Maybe those guys have no moral code at all.
Maybe playing hurt is just a game of con for them.

If they are anything similar to the characters described by:
– Hervey Cleckley in his seminal book “The Mask of Sanity”
– or by Robert D Hare in his books (especially “Without Conscience”)
… than your interpretation might be quite inaccurate Dan.

Ethics are all relative. The rationality of a group’s actions is questionable in any form of living I can think of. How extreme the actions are depends on the environment and the group’s mission. Usually it starts with survival and then after that get’s solved, it moves on to some form of relative domination (Who’s got the biggest?) This guy was in a group trying to dominate their environment and they had an irrational mission with questionable ethics but he compromised that for his social needs subconsciously. He made a trade off, everybody does it to some degree. Probably had some father issues too. Fixated at the Basic Trust vs Mis-trust stage. This made him a perfect soldier for his group’s mission. He devoted all that energy to his group and showed his loyalty through his actions. Watch the movie “Donnie Brasco” if you want to see how that works.

I’m guessing their get-togethers were the same as anybody else’s. They do not see themselves as anything special. They see themselves as just regular guys from the Southie. Their “job” was just that: a job. I’m sure they think it doesn’t define them anymore than most other people.

Strong in-group ethics are not irrational, and I don’t believe that that was Ariely’s point either. But strong in-group ethics about something relatively minor combined with a total lack of ethics when it comes to something most of us consider the strongest taboo of all – i.e. killing another human – is bizarre indeed.
Unfortunately shown by others too, like Norwegian killer Anders Bering Breivik who 2 years ago shot over 70 terrified teenagers at close range as a political statement, and in trial showed emotion once, when shown a video of his own political ranting that he found moving.

I think that the word “tribalism” should be used here. Tribalism is wrecking the country. Here is an example: the Republican party is nominally the party of less government, but in fact in many realms, it is the party of more government, based upon the tribal customs of a handful of the more extreme people in the red states. The same is true with various brands of Christianity where a particular group must not only conform to specific outlying interpretations of the Bible, but must also conform to certain strictures with regard to music style. What does that have to do with anything? Thus, the dominant ideas of Christianity are sublimated to the tribal strictures. And of course, we know the Democrats basically reinvented Political Correctness in the 20th century and the tea party and radical evangelicals are only trying their best to copy. The point of this is that tribalism causes people who normally WOULD agree with general principles of morality, to disagree if agreement would betray the tribe. In other words, the tribe is elevated above morality. It is not surprising that Lt. Calley or jailers of Abu Ghraib would violate norms of christian morality if they saw the tribal loyalty was superior.

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it can also be seen as the most rational thing to do. What is rational, is protecting the group you are in – you have a stake in your family – it is more rational to spend time/money/effort in supporting your family

Hi, I’m Dan Ariely. I do research in behavioral economics and try to describe it in plain language. These findings have enriched my life, and my hope is that they will do the same for you.